The Goats and the Sheep.
In Egypt the goats and the sheep, as is the case with their betters, are not separated from each other. In outward appearance, too, as respects size, colour, shape, and coat, there is not much difference between them, nor is there much difference between their mutton. This is not an instance, as some have suggested, of evil communications having corrupted good mutton, but the result of similarity of food. The Egyptian sheep have no mountain wild thyme, and no short sweet herbage to crop. The weeds, and the dry acrid plants on the edge of the desert, are all that Nature provides for them, and these they have to divide with the goats. The sourness of the food is what imparts to the mutton its twang; and then their wool is long and oily, and this oiliness of the wool must aid the ill effects of the food. I found, however, little reason to complain of the mutton, when I compared it with the beef. The goats supply the greater part of the milk, and of the butter, used in the country. Goats’ butter is as white as paper; in this respect resembling the butter of the cows of the American prairies. Neither sheep nor goats are larger than an ordinary-sized Newfoundland dog. They are generally of a rusty black, or smutty red colour.